If you build a system that is technically possible for someone to censor, particularly if you make it easy to do (and in fact where not doing so would cost them potentially billions of dollars in market cap in an upcoming IPO, recruiting, sales, vendors, etc), you shouldn’t be at all surprised when they do censor. It is interesting that Cloudflare has only really censored two sites (dailystormer and 8chan) outside of a fairly clearly articulated terms of service. There are clearly a large number of sites on Cloudflare which are a net liability to them and always will be, so the “free speech” stance is genuine.
Kicking out and not providing service isn't the same thing as censoring. One is customer-driven, the other is content-driven.
You can kick a customer out because they espouse certain views or whatever, and it's fine to call it discriminatory, but it's not censorship. This isn't usually a relevant distinction, but here it is because Cloudflare hasn't built "a system that is technically possible for someone to censor".
They could, and thank fuck they don't, because that would absolutely be the day I'm getting off Cloudflare.
The article mentioned that they are now and have been monitoring content of web sites they route and have been sharing information with various agencies based upon that content.
They have removed at least two portals, and higher up in the thread it is mentioned that they have also axed various sex related sites - and they are providing monitored info to agencies that use courts and guns to force people to do things... that is starting to sound more and more like a censorship system than a dump pipe which prevents overuse (ddos) - to me..
Only governments can censor; it is not a concept that applies to private parties. Cloudflare's decision to not continue a business relationship with someone is not censorship in any meaningful sense of the word.
That is like saying a grocery store that prohibits customers without shirts and shoes is the same thing as the forced famines of communist regimes: they are both starving people.
